The theme of the week this week: Making mistakes.

We all make them. Some are better at admitting to them than others. Some just run away and pretend they didn’t make a mistake and hide under a rock, or the digital equivalent thereof.

So we bring you stories of mistakes made and lessons learned today.

On Social Media Today, Alan Rosenblatt brings us the story of #AskMenendez, a.k.a., what happens when you don’t really think through your social media strategy. In short: U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) decided to hold a Twitter Town Hall with the #AskMenendez hashtag. The staff of his opponent, Joe Kyrillos, came up with a clever plan: Tweet his responses into the hashtag, too, getting his voice heard. But after one tweet? Kyrillos went silent – it appears he suddenly didn’t like the idea of including #AskMenendez on all his tweets. Commenters on the article pointed out that if his team had done a run-through or really talked through the strategy beforehand, the pros and cons of mentioning Menendez could have been weighed and a more informed decision could have been made at the outset. Hindsight, and all that.

Tuesday, I had the extreme pleasure of attending an event that Girls In Tech NYC (of which I’m a member of the board) co-hosted with Facebook. The theme was “Lessons Learned: Overcoming Our Mistakes” and was a frank discussion with an amazing group of female engineers. These women were brutally honest about the mistakes they’d made, ranging from quitting a tenured job at Perdue University (and becoming tenured in the first place) to not communicating with female co-workers about sexual harassment on the job. Polina Opelbaum of ProfNet put together a great recap of the event, which was by turns inspiring, frustrating and hilarious.

By now we know that social media is about pull not push. Or show, don’t tell. Or something like that. Basically: Don’t just hammer out marketing messages and expect people to pay attention. But with the content explosion and everyone Tweeting and Facebooking and Pinning and Tumbling and all sorts of other -ing, it’s a mess out there. Too many companies, particularly in the B2B space, more or less flounder when they get out into the big, bad social media marketing world. Sandra Zoratti‘s piece in The Social Media Monthly does a good job of detailing how marketers can get customers to not put their marketing on mute.

This one was a bit of a shocker today: The well-known Erika Napoletano (a.k.a. RedheadWriting) learned from one of her amazing community members that someone had more or less taken the copy off her website and was passing it off as her own. In other words, plagiarism. It was an unusual case, too, because it was the description of a service that Erika provides, not traffic-driving content. And it could have been completely avoided if this person had reached out to Erika or mentioned on her own site that she was inspired by Erika and not copied most of the text nearly verbatim. As another friend mentioned to me regarding something else entirely, “If getting blog ideas that come about from reading other blogs, articles and social media updates are wrong, then the internet should be shut down.” (Because it was a private conversation, I’m not attributing, but you can bet I’m letting my friend know I’m quoting her.) But there’s a difference between finding inspiration and just flat-out copying someone and passing it off as your own idea.

Finally, my biggest time-suck of the week was this totally amazing thread on Quora, “What has been the most embarrassing moment of your life?” The reason it was so fascinating was that the more run of the mill embarrassing stories – which tended to relate to farts and pooping one’s pants – were posted anonymously. But the ones that I found the most interesting were the ones where there were names attached – the one about the guy who held a gun on a lost elderly couple in the middle of the night (not as bad as it sounds) while buck naked; the one where the cabbie told a fare about the huge jerk he’d given a ride to a couple weeks earlier (it was him). Still, the poop and fart stories were rather epic examples of the genre and worth reading. Go on! It’ll make you feel lots better.

What mistakes did you make this week? How did you recover? Or, you know, you could just tell us your most embarrassing story. Or post it on Quora.

Photo by Leo Reynolds via Flickr Creative Commons.

Mediabistro spreads the word about SmartStream, the new way to chat via Twitter. If you are are a fan of using TweetChat to manage hashtags conversations, here is the new platform that allows you to do just that and a lot more. Some other features of SmartStream include the ability  to save chat transcripts, track active participants, and find other relevant hashtags. Read more.

No, we don’t have twin doughnuts for  you. Or donuts. Wish we did, but we don’t. We don’t even have one doughnut.

Now you know what to get me for my birthday.

That said, we do have two infographics for you! (I can hear the cheer rise like a phoenix from the Internet. If you could hear a phoenix rising, that is.)

The first one is a timeline of the Internet and the second pokes fun at the buzzword bingo we deal with every day.

So. This infographic by Haedodesign (and which we found on Visually) starts with the birth of Arpanet in 1969 and includes such milestones as the first spam (1978), first emoticon (1982), first search engine (1990) and the jam-packed year of 2003, which saw the birth of iTunes, Safari, Skype, LinkedIn, MySpace and WordPress. Enjoy:

When we’re at conferences or other live events, there’s little we enjoy more than a rousing game of Buzzword Bingo with our friends Sid Hassim, Gary J. Nix, Drew Neisser & Merlin Ward. So when Sid pointed out this infographic from PressAt on the most overused buzzwords in public relations.

I did not know, but was not the slightest bit surprised to learn that 48% of journalists delete email pitches that have too many buzzwords. Having been a journalist myself for many years, I can tell you that many of those pitches get the delete button long before anyone’s reached the second buzzword, however. Got one in my email today addressed to “Sir/Madam” and on a topic I’ve never written about. If you don’t take the time to find out who I am (even just the gender! It’s not that hard!), I don’t really have time for you.

Anyway, the top buzzwords include such gems as “influencer” and “organic.” I was also thrilled to see “low hanging fruit” and “gamification” in the list of most overused buzzwords.

In fact, I just pretty much loved this whole thing. So enjoy:

And “game changer”? How is that even still used? What’s your favorite (read: least favorite) buzzword?

Twins image by Jeremy Brooks via Flickr Creative Commons.

“The point is – Twitter chats are an integral part of the Twitter experience.” Tinu Abayomi-Paul discusses SmartStream as the TweetChat alternative she will be looking at for the Monthly Women Grow Business Twitter Chat. Read more.

Write-On-Track discusses how SmartStream will come to the rescue of all TweetChat fans. “SmartStream will allow the tens of thousands of weekly Twitter chat participants to engage in their favorite Twitter chats with ease. In addition to sharing similar functionality with the Twitter chat platform of choice – TweetChat – oneQube SmartStream will offer chatters some new features we think will enhance their Twitter chat experience.” Full story

When news broke over the weekend that longtime favorite TweetChat might have to shutter with the next round of API changes from Twitter, we spun out the #SmartStream function of our oneQube platform to help the communities who have been so kind to us over the last couple years. oneQube we don’t expect to release out of beta until at least the end of June, but #SmartStream is in the wild and will remain free in perpetuity. (Find out how to get to and use SmartStream.)

With that in mind, I thought I’d share some articles I read this week that talked about the culture around starting up.

Did you know that LinkedIn is 10 years old? Kind of hard to call anything that old a startup, I’d think. That’s what made this post by Mike O’Neil  so compelling – it was the early adopters who made LinkedIn what it is today, he argues. It’s true. It’s the people who use your product first who help shape your future. They can make or break you, finding the bugs and helping you fix them; telling their friends and family to use you; figuring out ways to use your product that never even occurred to you, and thus helping you shift and adjust. So we thank our fabulous beta users and those who’ve joined them on oneQube. You’ve gotten us to this point – hang on, because it’s gonna be a crazy ride!

Danny Brown looks at the start, too, from a different angle. Why Social Software Platforms Fail. Many reasons, including among them a lack of understanding of the space or the community and a goal to simply make money. If you’re not providing utility, eventually you’ll fail, whatever your product is. You need to understand the needs and appreciate the community in order to do well. And while it’s all well and good to believe you’ll make a lot of money off a product – nothing wrong with that, sure – if that’s your sole goal, you’re probably not going to end up providing something of lasting value. For us, oneQube, SmartStream and SeeSaw all have come out of our own social media use and the desire and need to get certain things out of it that no one else could provide. We understand and appreciate the Twitter ecosystem. And want to make it better.

I get a lot of email newsletters each week and rarely read most of them. One I do read every week is Bonnie Halper’s SOSList, primarily for Bonnie’s editorial post at the start. I may not always agree with her, but she always makes me think and I often find I see things in a new light after reading her editorials. This week, I gave two thumbs up to her piece about how the big boys are moving in on crowdfunding platforms, with Zach Braff (who already had financing in place for his film) using Kickstarter to fund his upcoming film. This line: “Remember: donors get nothing; if the film is successful, the producers get yet another opportunity to show up at a restaurant and take that table that you’d been waiting an hour for.” Ouch! But true. You know a platform is “mainstream” when it starts being used like this. But is that what the founders of Kickstarter were really seeking to achieve when they launched it? We don’t always know where we’re going and what our products will be used for, even if we have a very specific goal in mind.

The more things change, the more things change. That’s kind of the point of Julie Pippert’s post, “Social Media is Dead! Long Live Social Media!” Remember when it was weird and kind of exciting when someone on CNN mentioned Twitter? How unusual it was when  you met another person who had a Facebook profile? When you never knew what a Pinterest was and never thought about why someone would be obsessed with organizing photos of bridesmaid dresses by color? But social media and the Internet have accelerated the rate of change and we often need to be very agile to keep up with that change. What shouldn’t change, however, is critical thinking, Julie points out. We need to still determine how to tactically use these tools and which ones actually make sense. Step back and take a breath from time to time.

For my final link, I’m going completely out in left field and will share the most mind-blowing thing I learned on Tumblr this week: The person who voiced Eeyore in the original Winnie the Pooh animated film and the person who voiced Voltron in the original Transformers cartoon series of the 1980s? SAME PERSON. What’s the startup lesson from that? Quite simply: Sometimes a person you expect to be a one-note wonder is actually extremely agile and can fill a lot of roles. Have an open mind and let your team flex a little and try other things. They should be respectful of those who are the experts in those areas, but there’s nothing wrong with stretching beyond your job description now and again. And, yes, I linked to my own personal Tumblr. Things happen.

So, what links did you love this week?

Photo by Domiriel via Flickr Creative Commons.

Tom Spiglanin was impressed with oneQube SmartStream’s functionality.

Stacey Harris has found an alternative to TweetChat: oneQube’s #SmartStream. “In addition to being able to use it to focus on one hashtag you can use it to see what users and hashtags are active in your stream. This allows you to really target your tweets to hashtags that are being used by your connections.”

As longtime, active Twitter chat participants, we have long been fans of Tweetchat. Even as we were developing a chat function as part of our oneQube platform, we looked first to Tweetchat for functionality.

You can imagine our dismay when we learned this weekend that the Twitter API changes had made it all but impossible for Tweetchat to keep going. As active chat participants ourselves, we felt compelled as a company to help support the thousands of thriving chat communities that rely on TweetChat to power their Twitter chats. So we turned to our developers and asked them if it would be possible to get the chat functionality out of private beta and enable anyone to use it.

And now we have oneQube SmartStream.

SmartStream is a free Twitter chat platform with robust functionality that will allow the tens of thousands of weekly Twitter chat participants to engage in their favorite Twitter chats with ease. In addition to sharing similar functionality with the Twitter chat platform of choice – TweetChat – oneQube SmartStream will offer chatters some new features we think will enhance their Twitter chat experience.

 With our proprietary #SART (Social Analytics, Real Time) panel enabled, chat participants will able to see who is tweeting the most in the chat, what other hashtags are trending in the chat, and what links are being shared, without ever leaving the stream.  Powerful information, especially for chat hosts and guests.  

But perhaps the feature chat participants will come to love the most will be the transcript on demand functionality.  With just one click, you will be able to save a full transcript of the chat you just participated in, which will be permanently archived in your transcripts for future reference.  

SmartStream is just one part our multi-functional Social Relationship Management platform, oneQube. 

oneQube will be a paid platform, and SmartStream users will be able to get a sneak peak of oneQube functionality by clicking on the left navigation bar.  Our goal is to have oneQube fully available for use, with a generous free trial period, by the end of June.  SmartStream users may also ask to become part of the private beta, with those requests being honored on a first-come, first-served basis.

SmartStream will always be free.

How SmartStream works

To get started using SmartStream, go to oneQube.com and click on the blue “Register with Twitter” button on the homepage:

Authorize your Twitter account:

Create a oneQube account on the next screen, click get started, and you will land on your SmartStream homepage:

SmartStream Homepage:

To set the focus of your SmartStream to a Twitter chat, enter in the #hashtag in the Focus box and click “set focus”.  You are now in chat mode:

You will notice that the Tweet box is at the bottom of the page.  You can click it and drag it anywhere you like on the page, we recommend putting it on the top of the stream:

You can change the shape of the Tweet box to a square by clicking on the “X” in the top right corner and move it anywhere on the screen you prefer … it’s all about personal preference:

There are two ways you can view the Chat stream: Queue or Stream mode. Please note the default user setting is queue mode.

In queue mode, Tweets will “queue” up similar to how they do in native Twitter or Hootsuite.  The blue counter bar at the top indicates how many Tweets are waiting for you to view.  Click on the blue bar to release the Tweets in the pending in queue.  We provide a line separator to show where you last released Tweets into the stream, making it easy for you to keep track of your place in the chat.  

We recommend this for very active chats with a high volume of Tweets per minute.

To change to stream mode, click on stream control in the right corner of the navigation bar:

Slide the stream button from right to left, and you will now be in stream mode.  Tweets will load as they are presented, and in very fast chats, this mode may be hard to follow.  We still present a line demarking where the last batch of tweets came in.  

You can also control your #SART display in this box, so this is a good time to talk about #SART.

#SART stands for Social Analytics, Real Time. When this function is enabled, we are pulling and displaying data about a chat or conversation in real time: additional hashtags, active participants, and recent links shared.  

This can be valuable data, especially for chat hosts, if you want to see who is particularly active in a chat, or check out links being shared without leaving the stream.  If it proves to be a distraction, just go into stream control, slide the #SART button from right to left, and this display will go away.

You can engage in a chat in one of three ways: Tweet directly into the stream, RT with comment, or reply to all.

To Tweet directly into the stream, just type in the Tweet box and click the blue Tweet button:

To retweet or retweet with additional comment, just click on “retweet” under any tweet, and the tweet will auto-populate the box.  Add your comment or RT as is:

If you reply to a tweet that has multiple handles in it, they will all be included in the response:

To highlight a particular chat participant, click on “qubit” below a Tweet and click “Highlight”.  That person’s Tweets will now be tagged for the duration of the chat:

When someone Tweets @ you, or you are mentioned in a Tweet, those Tweets will be highlighted in BLUE:

One of the coolest  features of SmartStream is the ability for all users to save a Chat transcript on demand.  Just click on “Save Transcript” in the navigation bar.

A green confirmation window will display upper right:

Your saved transcript is accessed by clicking “view transcript” in the navigation, or scrolling over the left nav bar, and clicking “Transcripts” under “Smart Stream”.  Both lead to this page:

Click on “view transcript” on the right to access all the Tweets that shared during your active SmartScreen session. These Tweets are ordered starting from last to first, in a paginated display:

Important notes: These reports will ONLY contain the Tweets we captured during your active SmartStream session. They are not currently searchable, exportable, shareable, though that functionality may be added in the future.

You can save as many chat transcripts as you desire, and can delete them from the grid if you wish by clicking on the X next to the saved transcript.

Additional Functionality

We made some of our favorite little details from oneQube functionality available in SmartStream.

Hover over any link in SmartStream, and we will display a mini-preview box that will let you know what’s on the other side of the link without having to click through. No more blind clicking!

Similarly, you can hover over any blue Twitter handle to get a mini-preview of that person’s Twitter bio.  There is one important thing you can do from the box that pops up – click the “Profile Plus” earth globe-shaped icon on the bottom row.

This brings up a “Profile Plus” box for that user that includes recent Tweets, that user’s trends (who they are talking to, who is talking to them, and what hashtags they participate in), as well as a website summary if they happen to have a link in their bio.

A blue corner in the box means you are following that person already, and red corner means you are not.  Click on a red corner, and you will start following that person.

Media innovator and author Tonia Reis introduces SmartStream, the brand-new free Twitter chat feature of oneQube, which was recently launched, just in time to take over after TweetChat gets discontinued.